Thursday, November 6, 2014

KennesawState’s hockey program
joins the plethora of excitement surrounding Owl athletics, striking excitement
in students, growing in popularity, and even becoming a winning team. Coming
off a one-year suspension during the 2013-2014 season, which was due to team
members violating a club policy when team members trashed a hotel room, the
Owls have resumed at full strength sporting a 7-2 record to start their
2014-2015 campaign with wins over Tulane, Ole Miss, and cross-state rival Life
University.

A Division III club sport competing in the American
Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA), the Owls have had success in the past on
a national scale, winning the National Championship in 2006-07 and have
competed on the national level a few times since.

The team currently plays their home games at Kennesaw’s Ice
Forum and draw a significant amount of fans from the local community. Right
Wing Alex Dolhon favorably compares the attendance at Owls home games to that
of other arenas the team has visited on the road. Boasting about 500 to 1,000
fans per game, KSU is one of the ACHA’s leaders in overall game attendance and
it shows a significant impact on the players momentum.

“We went to like, Nashville,
they had no fans, Charleston,
they don’t have any fans. Nothing compares to playing at home. The atmosphere
and the home field advantage is just great.” said Dolhon. “People like hockey
around here. I think they just enjoy the games. We’re a good team, so they
enjoy the games. When the fans are louder, I think we feel better hearing the
chants and all that it’s a great atmosphere.”

Despite Kennesaw’s winning success and growing fanbase on
home ice, the players know that the hockey dream stops on Barrett Parkway. Being a club sport, they
will not have the opportunity to become professional in the sport following
graduation. The motive behind being apart of KSU hockey is truly for the love
of the game “I’ve been playing for about 14 years now and I love the game, and
it’s addicting.” said Dolhon “My cousin got me into hockey and I started
becoming a big fan and started playing.”

Assistant captain and center Rick Fiorillo says that playing
the game is more of a release to relieve stress "The whole year we weren't playing hockey, I was going crazy. I had to work out every day." said Fiorillo. "I love hockey, it's a relases and I enjoy the atmosphere and camaraderie of the team."

The team shares a tight chemistry on and off the ice, advertising their games outside KSU's Commons area and spending time with other team members. "We are always in contact with each other, working out at the gym together, eating lunch in the Commons, there's a good strong bond." said Fiorillo "We all know that we aren't going anywhere, that this is our last opportunity to play good hockey, so it's very much for love of the game."

Owls hockey has many exciting renovations to look forward to. The goal of the team is to reach Division II within the next season and they will also have a new ice hockey rink built behind the Party City on Barrett Parkway within the next year which will help the team's constant time restraints at the Ice Forum whilst providing them with a new home complete with their own locker room.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Georgia’s youngest Representative Michael Caldwell, after
both losing a run for State legislature in 2010 and becoming the state of
Georgia’s youngest state representative, runs unopposed in 2014 defending his
views on small government by articulating the rights Americans have that makes
us unique from the rest of the world.

A dual citizen of the United
States and the United
Kingdom, Caldwell
has a wide knowledge on the government’s role in citizens’ rights. He cites the
Constitution’s statement of unalienable rights from our creator as rights
separate from the government and the issue of divinity, that we have these
rights not because they are given, but because we are human beings. Caldwell states that we are among the “Fortunate five
percent” to take part in the Great American experiment of self-government that
makes the United States
stand out from the government of other nations.

”The sole fundamental difference in American government is
that in our founding documents we recognize that our rights are given to us by
our creator” said Caldwell.
“And whatever you believe about divinity couldn’t matter less because what the
difference is that we are the first nation in the history of the world, the
only nation since, to recognize that our rights come from something other than
government.”

Youth and adults that Caldwell
have spoken to have been unable to articulate a strong answer to the question “What
makes America
the greatest nation in the history of the world?” They are rarely taught, Caldwell says, this
principle in governing. When we are taught the difference between America
and every other “free” country we can take pride in the liberty that we
established in the Western world.

“When I travel under my United Kingdom passport, when I
deal with their government, they understand that I have rights solely because
her majesty the Queen of England has granted me her sovereign rights. That’s
the only reason I have rights. Any time she decides I don’t have rights, she is
the sovereign. I no longer have rights.” said Caldwell “Under my American passport, I am
the sovereign. I have rights because I’m a human being. The core princle here
is the approach that you have rights that I didn’t give you is a unique
approach.”

Caldwell
has observed that the debate of rights often turns into a discussion of the
separation of church and state, in which he argues is a different subject than
that of unalienable rights. However you believe the rights
originated, there are certain rights core to us as individuals. Aside from the
primary purpose of government to protect these liberties of the people, the
smaller the government the better.

Caldwell weekly hosts a
coffee discussion held with other District representatives at Copper Coin
Coffee in Woodstock, Georgia. Around a small table with slow jazz music
playing and each person in attendance holding a cup or mug, the discussion of
rights shifted to the state of police not being aware of the rights that citizens
have in the instance of police encounters without a warrant. “By no means do I
believe that we are on a frightening police path yet, but we are on an
interesting path if we don’t state precedent” said District 21 representative
Scot Turner “And not just educating police officers, but educating citizenry.
That’s the problem is that police become 007’s. ‘I feared for my safety, so I
shot him. Okay he’s following procedures’ I mean, it keeps happening. We’ve had
one shot dead in CherokeeCounty and the guy in
Lawrenceville that was executed in his own home and nobody’s going to get
punished.” Wisconsin is setting up a system that a third party review panel
under departments of the state will review a police afflicted death along with
other efforts to curve no knock warrants in both the Senate and the House.

Liz Baxter, Council Member Ward 4 in Woodstock, just finished police academy and
has been considering her stance on the issue. “I have bent my views on
different things. For lack of a better term, I guess I’m on the fence right
now.” Baxter said “Several years ago, they had a set up where you go into the
place and either shoot or not shoot. It was an exercise that was all paper, but
I don’t know what it would be like in real life.”

The consensus amongst those in attendance was to focus the
issue around the motives behind the polices actions. Discussing from the police
perspective, SWAT team training to be prepared to kill depending on who they
are dealing with along with the lack of research on both the CherokeeCounty
and Lawrenceville incidents. Caldwell
argued from the perspective of the officer rather than the fourth amendment
posing the question if it was justifiable to put the officers in danger.

Caldwell
affirms, however, that the idea of rights endowed to us as human beings are not
a product of the government but must be protected by the people and the
government at all costs. “There is a frightening lack of understand about
American exceptionalism, rights, and history in this generation” said Caldwell “When our
citizens understand these principles, they are prepared to safeguard them for
themselves as well as for future generations.”

The idea of unalienable rights is not only integral to Caldwell’s beliefs but
his whole philosophy on government. Caldwell’s
first bid for office was in 2010 at the age of 21 which despite his strong beliefs,
it was not likely that he would attain much of the vote. “At the beginning of
my first bid for a seat in our State Legislature in 2010, I sat with an
influential State senator. We spoke for nearly an hour and at the end, he told
me that although he appreciated my ideas and beliefs, that at my age if I took
10% of the vote, I would change the way he viewed Georgia politics.” said Caldwell “I decided that instead of bowing out, and if we weren’t likely to take a victory, that I would run a campaign exactly the way I thought a campaign should look. This involved things like self-limiting campaign contributions, prohibiting myself from accepting funding from anyone other than Georgia’s citizens or businesses, setting a new standard for transparency through tools like online fund trackers and legislative trackers, and more. I had no preconception of what a campaign “should look like” Though that felt like my biggest weakness at the time, hind sight has shown me that it was actually my biggest strength.”

Caldwell
took 46% of the votes on Election Day, losing by about 200 votes, an experience
that made an impact on his career as a politician. “Now that I have won and
lost, I have a clear favorite, but I wouldn’t trade my loss in 2010 for
anything. I learned more through that process and experience than I could have
learned in five wins.” Caldwell stated that both
the State of Georgia and the
United States
face a “daunting” number of issues in the future. He informs voters that we
could solve 90% of America’s
problems “if we could just get elected officials to maintain their oaths of
office, to uphold the Constitutions of ‘this State and the United States.’